


Cabin Fever

by Lilander



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bed & Breakfast, Ben Solo is a perfect gentleman, Cabin Sex, Consent is Sexy, Cozy Fall, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Nervous Ben, Oral Sex, Sweater Sex, Sweet vanilla sex, They're not virgins but past relationships don't matter, background stormpilot, cozy winter, there's only one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:27:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25649521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilander/pseuds/Lilander
Summary: Takodana, Maine.Recovering New York asshole Ben Solo has big plans for his bed & breakfast weekend: lock himself in his isolated cabin and figure out what to do with his life. But when the manager messes up his reservation, he ends up taking her cabin, and he can't let her sleep in the cold.Too bad there's only one bed.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 29
Kudos: 361
Collections: A Picture is worth 1000 Words - PL Summer Exchange, Winter Gems 2020





	Cabin Fever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emotionalsupporthufflepuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emotionalsupporthufflepuff/gifts).



> This is a PL exchange fic for @emotionalsupporthufflepuff! I hope you enjoy!

“What do you mean you don’t have my fucking reservation?”

The woman reading a newspaper by the fireplace glares at him.

“I’m sorry, sir.” The desk girl’s got the biggest, and phoniest, customer service smile he’s ever seen, and she calls him _sir_ like she’s throwing it at him.

 _“_ Look through your email,” he snaps.

 _“_ That is obviously the first thing I thought of, _sir,_ and I see no emails from that address, and no confirmation sent.”

It was supposed to be a cozy fall getaway. Not that Ben Solo would ever call anything _cozy,_ not willingly. Still, it’s an ideal place to figure stuff out, whatever the hell that means now that the trial’s over and the press has died down. There’s a lake, an isolated cabin, free breakfast, no internet, no emails from tabloids and basement publishers offering tell-all book deals, and, most importantly, not another human within a quarter mile.

But now this demon in a pink sweater is standing in his way.

“Let me speak to your manager.”

“I am the manager.”

He rolls his eyes, taking in the aggressive rustic cuteness of the B&B’s lobby.

“What are you, eighteen?”

She bristles. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not the manager. Let me talk to someone competent.”

“I am the manager on duty. And I’m twenty-five.”

“Good for you. Get me the fucking owner.”

“The owner isn’t here. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll check—“

Her cheeks flush, and then go a few shades whiter, so that the freckles dusted across her cheeks stand out in a way that would be cute if he weren’t absolutely certain she just realized she fucked up.

Ben knows that look. He’s a black-belt in fucking up.

“You lost it, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t initially find your file, sir. It was misspelled.”

 _Misspelled._ Ben’s had enough experience with scheduling software to see right through that bullshit, but before he can call her on it, she strikes a key—the delete key—with a fierceness he usually only uses when firing someone.

Ben had his reasons for not going with five-star accommodations, but still, this place costs too much to let some minimum-wage twenty-something screwup handle reservations.

“There,” she says with a simper that could peel grease off a driveway, “see? All fixed. I'll have to check with the maintenance staff to make sure your cabin is ready. Please enjoy some coffee and snacks while you wait.”

She shoves a leaf-splashed mug at him and waves vaguely in the direction of a table, piled high with the kind of cookies that cost way too much and only come in decorative tins.

Her pink sweater-sleeves are shrugged up over her elbows, revealing muscles he’d expect to see on an orphan from Oliver Twist. She’s cute, in a scrappy kind of way. Athletic, take-no-shit, more likely to be outside chopping down trees than running customer service. The kind of girl he could’ve had a chance with if he weren’t an asshole.

But he is an asshole. To her, specifically. Because, what, she made a mistake and fixed it?

Ben swipes the mug from her hand. The cider is infuriatingly delicious, probably made from apples from the tree right out the window, and this whole place is fucking adorable.

A chime of the bell marks the desk girl leaving in a huff. He didn’t catch her name.

He takes six cookies because they’re free, and the purple-haired woman glares at him before going back to her newspaper.

***

The cabin’s nothing fancy, about what he expected for the price. A guy named Finn showed him the firewood and made sure Ben wasn’t too stupid to read the card with the instructions for not burning the place down. Finn’s eyebrows raised when he opened the fridge to find it stocked with cheese, mustard, and a twelve-pack of Molson, but he flashed a winning smile and said something about lumberjack snacks and left Ben to haul in the food and liquor he brought for himself. He manages to get just settled enough to realize he has no clue what he was hoping to accomplish here other than stare at the fire, which he does for several hours.

He came all the way out here to be alone, and now he’s _lonely._

Figures.

When he can’t stand it anymore, he shrugs on his coat and walks out into the chill autumn night.

No snow yet, just biting fall air, a thermos full of hot coffee from the lobby, and it’s almost eleven when he realizes he’s starting to feel human again.

A flash of bright yellow out the dock resolves into a hideous puffer jacket, and wrapped in that jacket, the girl from the desk. He tries to ignore her. What’s he going to say? Beautiful evening, miss?

Besides, she’s bent over, wrestling with a tarp and one of the rowboats stacked up against the side of the deckhouse.

He continues on his way, but something about her fiddling with the tarp is--off.

She crawls into one of the boats and lays down.

More curious than anything, Ben approaches the dock, regretting it as soon as the thud of his boots on wood makes her sit up in alarm.

"Oh," she says. "It's you." 

“You’re sleeping out here," he observes.

“This is a campground,” she snaps.

“It’s about to snow.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You know you’re in Maine, right? I can handle a bit of snow on my tent.”

The fake politeness is gone, and Ben finds he’s glad.

“That’s not a tent,” he says. “That’s a boat-cover.”

“It’s what I say it is.”

He cards a hand through his hair, and something clicks. The beer in the fridge. The mustard, the still-wet cups drying in the rack by his sink, the hastily-made bed in the loft.

“You gave me your cabin, didn’t you?”

She grimaces. “No,” she says with just enough hesitation to make it absolutely clear she’s lying through her chattering teeth.

Damn it.

“Is this coming out of your pay?” he asks.

“What?”

“Look, I know you lost the reservation. They’re not—are they docking your pay?”

She looks like she’s considering arguing, but finally wraps her jacket tighter around her. “No. I’m covering for Maz—the owner—while she’s out of town. Finn promised not to tell.” A beat. “And I’m sorry. That—a mistake--was made.“

“By you.”

“Mm.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” she grumbles. “I shouldn’t have made a mistake.”

“So you’re, what, sleeping outside to make up for it?”

“You’re the one who acted like a piece of piss.”

“I drove four hours to get here.”

“Right, so you get to treat people like garbage.”

He’s about to say that yes, of course he does, because this is a service industry and he wasn’t being served, and what’s he supposed to do, close his eyes and meditate?

“Old habits die hard,” he says.

“What are you, some rich investment banker or something?”

He stops himself from pouting, annoyed that his leather jacket apparently didn’t cut that image as much as he hoped.

“Half right,” he mutters.

“Poor investment banker?”

“Rich ex-investment banker.”

“At least you’re rich. Must be nice.”

It is nice. He gets to be the asshole everyone else worries about.

It’s starting to snow in earnest now, and the trees shiver through a sharp gust that sends dry leaves spinning to the frosted grass at their feet. She shivers, too. Whatever she says about Maine and snow, she doesn’t have the gear for a night like this.

Damn. It.

“The point is, you’re not sleeping out here.”

She shrugs away from him.

“I’ll sleep where I want, thanks.”

“You’re cold. Here.”

He shoves the thermos at her, and she only glares at him a second before unscrewing it and taking a sip of coffee.

“I’m not taking your cabin,” he says.

“What? No. You’re paying to stay here, and it was my mistake.”

“Yeah, and you paid me back in beer.”

Her eyes go wide, reflecting the moonlight. “I forgot the beer?”

“And the mustard.”

“Fuck.”

Her accent is beautiful when she says _fuck._ It makes him think about those lips, and…

No. For so many reasons, no.

He starts walking away, and, to his relief, she drops the tarp and follows. Something about that practicality is almost endearing. Ben would’ve stayed out there all night, pouting--or at least he would’ve been tempted to. She apparently recognizes how stupid that would be.

“Where will you sleep?” she asks.

“Couch.”

“You’re way too big for that couch.”

The way she says it makes his breath hitch. Did he imagine the leer there?

No way. She’s what, ten years younger than he is and smoking hot? No way.

It’s probably the cold. 

***

There’s only one bed.

It’s not even a bed, really, just a mattress on the floor since the sloping cabin roof is too low to accommodate a bedframe.

“I’m not making you sleep on the couch,” she says, gesturing at the bed just visible above them in the loft. “Look. It’s a queen. If you’re going to be a baby about it, you can sleep on one side and I’ll sleep on the other.”

“That’s--no.”

“Why not? We’re adults. If you’re that worried about girl-cooties we can put pillows between us.”

He grimaces. It does seem stupid.

Which is how he found himself beside a beautiful woman in a dark cabin loft, listening to her breathing and the leaves outside. It couldn’t be more chaste, since the cabin is cold enough that she confesses to sleeping in sweaters on top of her t-shirt and fleece cloud-print pajama pants. Ben, who usually sleeps in his boxer-briefs, kept his shirt on and pulled on a pair of sweatpants.

He turned down the pillow, at least. He can feel her body heat under the blankets.

 _Cooties._ No wonder he’s single.

After what seems like hours of determinedly _not_ thinking about what’s under that sweater, he reaches over to his Apple watch charging beside the mattress. The face blasts on, revealing that it’s only midnight. It’s been about fifteen minutes.

“Can’t sleep?” she asks.

He flops back on the mattress. Maybe the coffee was a mistake. “Yeah.”

“Me neither.”

“Great.”

“You could tell me why you’re out here,” she says. When he glances over, she’s looking up at the rafters.

He rubs his temple, and when he glances at her he catches her eyes darting to where his t-shirt reveals a slice of skin above his waistband.

Interesting. Better not to think about.

“I’d rather not,” he says.

“Can I guess?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s better than staring at the ceiling and not being able to sleep.”

He shrugs. “Fine.”

And so she guesses. Ben’s not sure what he expected, but it was more in the vein of “awkward silence for hours.” Not...this.

He hasn’t laughed this hard in years. It just feels _good_ to be with her, even though he’s crammed into a mattress that’s too short for him, trying not to let his hands and feet go anywhere inappropriate as their conversation veers back and forth. They exchange names--she already knows his--and the basics. They both love cars, and she _really_ loves cars; he was right about her being more of a wood-chopper than a front-desk girl, and she grew up in South London. The next time he checks his watch it’s one-thirty, he’s grabbed them each a beer from the fridge downstairs, and they’ve realized they completely forgot her guessing-game.

“Okay,” she’s saying with a smile that lights up the cabin. “I’m going to figure this out. You were dating someone at work and it went south.”

He shakes his head, snorting. “You’d make a bad psychic.”

“You were dating someone at work and it _didn’t_ go south, but you’re afraid of commitment and now you’re up here wondering if you should propose before she leaves you because she doesn’t think it’s going anywhere?”

“You watch a lot of Hallmark channel, don’t you?”

Her mouth quirks at the lip of the bottle. 

“You said you came up here to be alone, you must have a reason.”

“I’m failing pretty hard at that.”

“Hey, I was happy to sleep in a boat, so that’s your own fault. But seriously, why come up here?”

“I’m hiding from the press.”

She snorts and takes a drink.

“You’re not going to guess why?” he asks.

“How many guesses do I get?”

“Three.”

“Done. Guess one: you accidentally sent nudes to the New York Times.”

“No.”

“Have you ever sent nudes to anyone?”

“Why do you care?”

She shakes the bottle in a _touche_ gesture.

“Fine, guess two: you have the sole copy of Katy Perry’s next album.”

“Is she the one who did that Tick-Tock song?”

“Are you shitting me?”

“What?”

She pinches her nose with a theatrical sigh. “Alright,” she says, “guess three: you got rich working for the Russian mafia and now the cops are on to you.”

“That’s…shockingly close, actually.”

She coughs and sets the bottle on the side table with a thud. 

“Wait, what?”

Outside, the wind shivers through the trees.

“I worked for First Order Investments.”

Her eyebrows wrinkle. “The one that was doing all that illegal stuff a few years ago?”

He bites his tongue. It’s still not easy to say this; the words sound so cut-and-dried, so easy.

“I was one of the whistleblowers,” he says. “I testified against the CEO and about a dozen others, and the trials finally ended.”

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“That’s…very noble of you.”

The mattress squeaks as he shifts uncomfortably.

“I don’t know, I guess.”

“Are you in witness protection or something?”

“No.”

“It must’ve been dangerous, though.”

“Not physically. And I screwed over a lot of people on the way up.”

“But you changed.”

“Maybe.” He shrugs, settling back on the pillow. It's snowing pretty hard now; by morning the whole grounds will be white above the shock of red maples.

“So you’re trying to figure out where to go from here,” she says.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

Why the hell is he having a conversation about his life goals with a woman who works the front desk at a Maine B&B?

He likes this girl. A lot more than he’s liked the other girls in his life.

She picks up her bottle, tilts it back and forth without taking a drink.

“I kind of killed the mood,” he says.

It’s a stupid thing to say. There wasn’t a mood, this isn’t a date, this is an awkward few hours with a girl who probably meets dozens of random strangers every season. Like summer camp. You always feel like you’re going to remember the people you bond with at camp forever, but by October you barely remember their names.

She sips her beer.

“I faked my death and flew to the US to hide from my foster father.”

Now he’s the one who sets down his bottle too hard. “What?”

“It seemed like we were done with the shallow stuff. You don’t like Katy Perry but you gave up your career to turn in bad people. I had a pretty bad life before I got here, but Maz and Finn and Poe and Bibi are like family, and they’re helping me figure things out, too. So we’re doing the same thing, a bit. In the same place. I don’t know, just, you’re not alone.”

She smiles when she says it, and then flushes.

“I didn’t think that’d sound as cheesy as it did,” she mutters.

“It’s not cheesy. It’s--thanks. Neither are you.”

Something’s changed, and it’s not just her body heat and their nunnery-levels of clothes making the room extra warm. It feels like there’s a thread between them.

She shifts on the mattress.

Her thigh is touching his.

Her hand is on his thigh.

His brain is stuck on a play-by-play, completely unable to move past _girl hand thigh hard-on fuck fuck fuck._

And then it clicks.

“Wait. Wait, Rey. That’s not what this is.”

Her face goes purple, and she drops her hand.

The silence roars.

“Sorry,” she mutters.

“What? No, I’m sorry. I can’t believe I was laying here thinking you actually wanted…no. You don’t owe me anything. Okay? I’m not going to tell anyone you lost the reservation.”

She cocks her head to the side and adjusts her back against the pillow. “What?”

“Just—forget it,” he says. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to do that.”

She makes a gesture like she’s about to ask a question, then crosses her arms over her chest, then tugs at the sleeves of her thrift-store sweater. “You think I’m offering to sleep with you because I’m afraid you’ll get me sacked?”

“I—never said anything about sleeping with me.”

“Yeah, I know, but I did. Just now.”

Ben swallows. “Right.”

“That’s just...really nice of you. To worry.”

Maybe it was sitting as a witness against a bunch of creeps, but the idea of doing anything else never entered his head. “You deserve basic decency,” he tells her.

She blushes. She actually blushes, so deep he can see it in the moonlight, and looks away.

“Maz would never fire me,” she says. “I was just worried if you found out I made a mistake you’d leave a bad review and hurt all of us. Maz doesn’t want us to know, but money’s tight. She’s thinking we might not be able to open next season.”

Ben blinks.

“I’m not going to leave a bad review. Obviously.”

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to kiss you now, okay? Because I want to.”

“Yeah. Good, great. Fantas--”

She tastes like mustard, which shouldn’t be sexy but absolutely is, and her mouth is hot and wet and eager. It’s been nearly a decade and his body acts like it, springing into action within seconds of finding itself in the vicinity of warm soft girl.

His brain and body move on their own, caught up in the jittery giddiness he imagines all the high schoolers cooler than he was felt when they fumbled around in camp beds. Only this is better, because he _likes_ this girl and she attacks him like a banshee with a strong need to put its tongue down someone’s throat.

She’s on top of him, riding him, grinding down against him while kissing him breathless, and finally he comes to his senses enough to pull away, because this is getting urgent. “I don’t have any condoms,” he breathes.

“I do.”

Of course she does. She’s gorgeous, and it’s not his business if she does this stuff all the time. He’s a grown-up, he can deal with the ache of a one-night stand.

She senses his distance, and kisses him. “Finn left them here.”

Finn, the attractive rugged guy who showed him the cabin. “Oh.”

“I mean, when he and his boyfriend lived here.”

“Oh?”

“I mean...It’s been a long time,” Rey says. “I...don’t usually do this,” she says, a little breathy. “We just met.”

Ben breathes a sigh of relief that makes her hair flutter, and his hands tighten over her back.

“Me neither.”

“Come on. You’re rich and built like a fridge.”

She squeezes his pecs to demonstrate. He didn’t have any other way to work off nervous energy these last few years.

“I...thank you?”

“I usually have trust issues.”

Ben snorts at the sudden change of topic, like she's trying to talk him out of taking a chance on her, and then moans when she kisses her way down his neck. “Yeah, me too.”

She slides her hands up his t-shirt. “I’m too much for people,” she says.

She flicks her thumbs across his nipples, and he sort of bites her hair. “I know how that goes.”

Her hand snakes between his legs, cupping him through his sweatpants. “My mouth gets me in trouble a lot.”

“I like your mouth.”

“I like yours.”

“I want you to come on it,” he blurts.

Ben’s learned to cover his shyness with extra-thick plates of aggression, but nobody would ever call him _suave._ So it makes his cock twitch in possessive glee when she visibly clenches her thighs.

“Fuck, Ben.”

“Yeah?”

She practically throws herself back on the bed, shimmying out of her cloudy blue pyjama-bottoms to reveal a nest of brown curls and a smell that makes him dizzy.

He’s never done _this_ before, though he’s thought about it. A lot. With his hand crammed down his pants as he imagined some nameless girl who smelled like heaven. Rey smells like woodsmoke and dry leaves and vanilla, and when he brings his tongue to her, she tastes so good he groans. He pushes her sweater up over her nipples so he can watch her little tits bounce while he works, touching them until he has to anchor her to bed by her hips.

Maybe he’ll never get to do this again, so he takes his time, until the little membrane under his tongue is screaming and he’s practically drunk on the way he has to force her hips into the bed to keep her from bucking. She’s about to pull his hair out by the roots when she moans _fingers, please,_ and he obliges, slipping two fingers in at once, mouthing _fuck_ into her clit when she opens for him. That’s good. He wants her to be tight, but he’s way bigger than two fingers.

He slides in and out, and when he crooks his fingers she makes a strangled sound.

“Keep doing that or I’ll kill you.”

Ben is too turned on to laugh, but a few second later she arches backward and he _keeps doing it_ because she told him too.

She’s beautiful when she comes, and even more beautiful when she collapses onto the mattress, totally wrecked, breathing hard.

She slides her hand across the tented front of his sweatpants, and starts to slip down the bed before he’s even recovered. “Your turn,” she breathes.

The thought of that mouth around him almost ends things then and there, and he grabs her wrist.

“Condom. Now.”

She flashes him a wicked grin, and he admires the curve of her ass when she scoots to the edge of the bed to dig around in the nightstand. She takes the condom pack in her teeth and yanks his shirt over his head, and when she starts to pull her own sweater off too, he cups her breast.

“Leave it.”

“My sweater?”

The condom drops from her teeth.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s cute. I like it.”

She grins, picks up the condom, and leers down at his waistband. “I want you naked.”

“You’re the boss,” he says. It’s cheesy and he regrets it as soon as he says it, but she sort of preens. She likes being the boss. He'd probably like calling her _ma'am._

But all thoughts of future activities go out the window when she pulls the waistband down.

“I hope these fit,” she says with a tone of awe.

“They’re large-size,” he says, breathing a silent prayer of thanks to Finn or his boyfriend for being well-endowed. “Should be fine.”

She gives the base of him a gut-wrenching squeeze and then falls back on the bed, spreading luxuriously to show off her swollen, glorious wetness.

He rolls the condom on so quickly he nearly snaps it and settles on his knees on the bed. When she wraps his legs around him he could die. The condoms aren’t lubed, so he plunges his fingers in again, working her open and forcing little sounds out of her mouth that sound like muffled curses, and then rubs the wetness all over his tip. Even so, he works carefully, rubbing himself along her, picking up as much of her juices as he can, before he works the tip inside her.

“Oh god,” they moan at the same time.

“All good?” he confirms. She’s _very_ tight.

In answer, she uses her heels on the small of his back to urge him forward like a horse, and he starts nudging her open, in and out, sinking a centimeter deeper on each stroke until finally, _finally,_ he gets that first magnificent thrust all the way in.

“ _Yes._ ”

When he looks up at Rey’s face, it’s complete ecstasy.

“Move,” she orders.

He moves. 

Time blurs, and his vision narrows down to her flushed face, lips parted, hair everywhere, her demure little sweater pushed up to her chin to reveal her tits bouncing underneath him, and he realizes he wants to fuck this woman every day for the rest of this week. Longer, even. As long as she wants.

She looks up at him with eyes wide, trusting. It's her eyes that push him over the edge, and he comes with a groan, and she holds on him with her legs as he forces himself not to fall and crush her.

Shit, how long was that? Not long. 

When he recovers enough breath, he rolls to the side and takes her in his arms.

"Sorry that was so quick," he mutters. "It's been a while."

"We've got lots of condoms," she says, and it slides into a yawn. "And your reservation's three nights." Too fast, she claps her mouth shut. "I mean--if you want. I guess I shouldn't assume."

"I like the sound of that," he murmurs against her cheek.

She stretches against his body, sweat-soaked, and he helps her finally shrug out of the sweater. She uses it to wipe herself, and when she offers it to him, he accepts with a laugh.

***

Turns out that cabin walls are thin, and thanks to Poe’s early-morning chores and Rey’s early-morning moaning, nothing they did was a secret.

“The other cabins are too far away to hear,” Finn assures them with a crooked smile.

“Trust us,” Poe says with a hand on Finn’s waist. “We’ve tested it."

Finn's face twists. "Yeah, and so have Maz and Chuy. Anyway, nice to meet you, Ben.”

They don’t have to ask his name. Rey said it. Loudly.

***

Ben extends his reservation through the week. He pays in full, but Maz assures him it’s no problem, provided Rey continues her work, that he stays with her in their cabin, so he’s not interrupting their full holiday schedule.

At the end of the week, he extends it again. He invites Rey down to his apartment in New York, but neither of them really wants to go. She likes the work, and when Maz invites them over for shabbat dinner she asks Ben to take a look at the accounting and some of the ‘business speak’ she can’t figure out. He helps with the phones, gets rid of the payrolls she’s doing by hand, and sets up retirement accounts for the staff. He tutors Bibi, the part-time cleaner and Finn and Poe's unofficial adopted confused non-binary kid, in their high school classes. Though when he offers to help with the desk Maz pats him on the cheek and says she doesn’t want people thinking this place is run by the secret service.

Finn and Poe, in a great ritual, present him with a hideous white fisherman’s sweater. He finds he doesn’t mind it. Rey _certainly_ doesn’t mind it, and he doesn't mind seeing her parade around their cabin in it and nothing else.

At the end of December, Maz declares that she can’t show her face in her socialist knitting group if she keeps exploiting his labor, so he does some tutoring at Bibi's school and starts looking into charities in town.

In February, he quietly offers to give her the money to keep the place solvent, but she refuses. “I’m sorry sweetheart, but that feels a lot like selling the place to a rich asshole from Manhattan and I just don’t have the heart for that.”

Ben drives to the closest village with cell reception and makes some calls. He talks it over with Rey first, of course, and hands Maz his resume.

“Benny, now you know I can’t pay you.”

“You couldn’t pay me before. But you haven’t seen our updated reservations calendar.”

“Ben Solo, what did you do?”

“A little advertising down in the city. That’s all, I promise. And don't even think about giving me anything more than minimum wage before Bibi gets full-time with benefits.”

“It’s full!” Poe says, glancing up from the ancient computer with awe. “The whole season’s full!”

“Ben, this is great!” Bibi says. “You’re like Santa Claus!”

“Yeah, I guess, if Santa were really anxious and kind of a bast—oof!”

Rey’s mouth swallows the rest of his self-deprecation, and Ben lets himself sink into it.

"You know I just gave us all a ton of work," he murmurs when she lets him go.

Rey smiles, and kisses him again. "As long as I don't have to work the desk."


End file.
